Quamuis non modico caleant spectacula sole
Vela reducuntur cum venit Hermogenes.
Though fervent sun make’t hot to see a play,
When linen thieves come, sails are kept away. [64]
The nets likewise, which they used to put before the people, to save them from the harm and violence of the baited beasts, were woven with gold.
auro quoque torta refulgent
Retia.
Nets with gold interlaced,
Their shows with glittering graced. [65]
If anything be excusable in such lavish excess, it is where the invention and strangeness breedeth admiration, [66] and not the costly charge.
Even in those vanities we may plainly perceive how fertile and happy those former ages were of other manner of wits than ours are. It happeneth of this kind of fertility, as of all other productions of Nature. We may not say what Nature employed than the utmost of her power. We go not, but rather creep and stagger here and there; we go our pace. [67] I imagine our knowledge to be weak in all senses: we neither discern far-forward, nor see much backward. It embraceth little and liveth not long. It is short, both in extension of time and in ampleness of matter or invention.
Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi, sed omnes illachrymabiles
Urgentur, ignotique longa
Nocte.
Before great Agamemnon and the rest,
Many liv’d valiant, yet are all supprest,
Unmoan’d, unknown, in dark oblivion’s nest. [68]
Et supera bellum Troianum et funera Troiæ,
Multi alias alii quoque res cecinere poetæ.
Beside the Troyan war, Troy’s funeral night,
Of other things did other poets write. [69]
And Solon’s narration, concerning what he had learned of the Egyptian priests of their states long-life, and manner how to learn and preserve strange or foreign histories, in mine opinion is not a testimony to be refused in this consideration. Si interminatam in omnes partes magnitudinem regionum videremus, et temporum, in quam se inijciens animus et intendens, ita late longeque peregrinatur, ut nullam oram ultimi videat, in qua possit insistere: in hæc immensitate infinita, vis innumerabilium appareret formarum. If we behold an unlimited greatness on all sides both of regions and times, whereupon the mind casting itself and intentive doth travel far and near so as it sees no bounds of what is last whereon it may insist; in this infinite immensity there would appear a multitude of innumerable forms. [70]
If whatsoever hath come unto us by report of what is past were true and known of anybody, it would be less than nothing in respect of that which is unknown. And even of this image of the world which, whilst we live therein, glideth and passeth away, how wretched, weak, and how short is the knowledge of the most curious? Not only of the particular events which fortune often maketh exemplary and of consequence but of the state of mighty commonwealths, large monarchies, and renowned nations, there escapeth our knowledge a hundred times more than cometh unto our notice. We keep a coyle [71] and wonder at the miraculous invention of our artillery and amazed at the rare device of printing; when as unknown to us, other men and another end of the world named China knew and had perfect use of both a thousand years before. If we saw as much of this vast world as we see but a least part of it, it is very likely we should perceive a perpetual multiplicity and ever-rolling vicissitude of forms. Therein is nothing singular and nothing rare, if regard be had unto nature, or to say better, if relation be had unto our knowledge, which is a weak foundation of our rules and which doth commonly present us a right-false image of things. How vainly do we nowadays conclude the declination and decrepitude of the world by the fond arguments we draw from our own weakness, drooping, and declination:
Iamque adeo afecta est ætas, affectaque tellus.
And now both age and land
So sick affected stand. [72]
And as vainly did another conclude its birth and youth by the vigour he perceiveth in the wits of his time, abounding in novelties and inventions of diverse arts:
Verum ut opinor, habet nouitatem, summa recensque
Natura est mundi, neque pridem exordia cepit:
Quare etiam quædam nunc artes expoliuntur,
Nunc etiam augescunt, nunc addita navigiis sunt
Multa.
But all this world is new, as I suppose,
World’s nature fresh, nor lately it arose:
Whereby some arts refined are in fashion,
And many things now to our navigation
Are added, daily grown to augmentation. [73]
Our world hath of late discovered another (and who can warrant us whether it be the last of his brethren, since both the Daemons, the Sibyls, and all we have hitherto been ignorant of this?) no less large, fully-peopled, all-things-yielding and mighty in strength than ours, nevertheless so new and infantine [74] that he is yet to learn his A. B. C. It is not yet full fifty years that he knew neither letters, nor weight, nor measures, nor apparel, nor corn, nor vines. But was all naked, simply-pure, in Nature’s lap, and lived but with such means and food as his mother-nurse afforded him. If we conclude aright of our end, and the foresaid poet of the infancy of his age, this late-world shall but come to light when ours shall fall into darkness. The whole universe shall fall into a palsy or convultion of sinnowes; [75] one member shall be maimed or shrunken, another nimble and in good plight.
I fear that by our contagion we shall directly have furthered his [76] declination and hastened his ruin, and that we shall too dearly have sold him our opinions, our new-fangles, and our arts. It was an unpolluted, harmless, infant world; yet have we not whipped and submitted the same unto our discipline or schooled him by the advantage of our valour or natural forces, nor have we instructed him by our justice and integrity, nor subdued by our magnanimity. Most of their answers and a number of the negotiations we have had with them witness that they were nothing short of us, not beholding to us for any excellency of natural wit or perspicuity concerning pertinency.
The wonderful, or as I may call it, amazement-breeding magnificence of the never-like seen cities of Cuzco and Mexico, and amongst infinite such like things, the admirable garden of that King, where all the trees, the fruits, the herbs, and plants, according to the order and greatness they have in a garden, were most artificially framed in gold; as also in his cabinet, all the living creatures that his country or his seas produced were cast in gold; and the exquisite beauty of their works, in precious stones, in feathers, in cotton, and in painting, show that they yielded as little unto us in cunning and industry. But concerning unfeigned devotion, awful observance of laws, unspotted integrity, bounteous liberality, due loyalty, and free liberty, it hath greatly availed us that we had not so much as they: by which advantage they have lost, cast-away, sold, undone, and betrayed themselves.
Touching hardiness and undaunted courage and as for matchless constancy, unmoved assuredness, and undismayed resolution against pain, smarting, famine, and death itself, I will not fear to oppose the examples which I may easily find amongst them to the most famous ancient examples we may with all our industry discover in all the annals and memories of our known old world. For, as for those which have subdued them, let them lay aside the wiles, the policies, and stratagems which they have employed to cozen, to cony-catch, [77] and to circumvent them; and the just astonishment which those nations might justly conceive, by seeing so unexpected an arrival of bearded men, diverse in language, in habit, in religion, in behaviour, in form, in countenance, and from a part of the world so distant and where they never heard any habitation was, mounted upon great and unknown monsters, against those who had never so much as seen any horse and less any beast whatsoever apt to bear or taught to carry either man or burden; covered with a shining and hard skin and armed with slicing-keen weapons and glittering armour, against them who, for the wonder of the glistering of a looking-glass or of a plain knife, would have changed or given inestimable riches in gold, preci
ous stones, and pearls; and who had neither the skill nor the matter wherewith at any leisure they could have pierced our steel; to which you may add the flashing-fire and thundering roar of shot and harquebuses, able to quell and daunt even Cæsar himself, had he been so suddenly surprised and as little experienced as they were; and thus to come unto and assault silly-naked people, saving where the invention of weaving of cotton cloth was known and used; for the most altogether unarmed, except some bows, stones, staves, and wooden bucklers; [78] unsuspecting poor people, surprised under colour of amity and well-meaning faith, over-taken by the curiosity to see strange and unknown things: I say, take this disparity from the conquerors, and you deprive them of all the occasions and cause of so many unexpected victories.
When I consider that stern-untamed obstinacy and undaunted vehemence, wherewith so many thousands of men, of women, and of children, do so infinite times present themselves unto inevitable dangers for the defence of their gods and liberty, [and] this generous obstinacy to endure all extremities, all difficulties, and death, more easily and willingly than basely to yield unto their domination, of whom they have so abominably been abused—some of them choosing rather to starve with hunger and fasting, being taken, than to accept food at their enemies’ hands, so basely victorious—I perceive that whosoever had undertaken them man to man, without odds of arms, of experience, or of number, should have had as dangerous a war, or perhaps more, as any we see amongst us.
Why did not so glorious a conquest happen under Alexander, or during the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans? Or why befell not so great a change and alteration of empires and people under such hands as would gently have polished, reformed, and uncivilized, what in them they deemed to be barbarous and rude or would have nourished and fostered those good seeds, which nature had there brought forth, adding not only to the manuring of their grounds and ornaments of their cities such arts as we had, and that no further then had been necessary for them, but therewithal joining unto the original virtues of the country those of the ancient Grecians and Romans? What reparation and what reformation would all that far-spreading world have found, if the examples, demeanors, and policies wherewith we first presented them had called and allured those uncorrupted nations to the admiration and imitation of virtue and had established between them and us a brotherly society and mutual correspondency? How easy a matter had it been, profitably to reform and Christianly to instruct minds yet so pure and new, so willing to be taught, being for the most part endowed with so docile, so apt and so yielding natural beginnings? Whereas, contrariwise, we have made use of their ignorance and inexperience to draw them more easily unto treason, fraud, luxury, avarice, and all manner of inhumanity and cruelty, by the example of our life and pattern of our customs. Who ever raised the service of merchandise and benefit of traffic to so high a rate? So many goodly cities ransacked and razed; so many nations destroyed and made desolate; so infinite millions of harmless people of all sexes, states, and ages, massacred, ravaged, and put to the sword; and the richest, the fairest, and the best part of the world topsy-turvied, [79] ruined, and defaced for the traffic of pearls and pepper. Oh mechanical victories! Oh base conquest! Never did blind ambition, never did greedy revenge, public wrongs, or general enmities, so moodily enrage and so passionately incense men against men unto so horrible hostilities, bloody dissipation, and miserable calamities.
Certain Spaniards coasting alongst the sea in search of mines, fortuned to land in a very fertile, pleasant, and well-peopled country, unto the inhabitants whereof they declared their intent and showed their accustomed persuasions saying that they were quiet and well-meaning men, coming from far-countries, being sent from the king of Castile, the greatest King of the habitable earth, unto whom the Pope, representing God on earth, had given the principality of all the Indies; that if they would become tributaries to him, they should be most kindly used and courteously entreated. [80] They required of them victuals for their nourishment and some gold for the behoof [81] of certain physical experiments. Moreover, they declared unto them the believing in one only God and the truth of our religion, which they persuaded them to embrace, adding thereto some minatory [82] threats.
Whose answer was this: That happily they might be quiet and well meaning, but their countenance showed them to be otherwise. As concerning their King, since he seemed to beg, he showed to be poor and needy. And for the Pope, who had made that distribution, he expressed himself a man loving dissention, in going about to give unto a third man a thing which was not his own, so to make it questionable and litigious amongst the ancient possessors of it. As for victuals, they should have part of their store. And for gold, they had but little and that it was a thing they made very small account of, as merely unprofitable for the service of their life; whereas all their care was but how to pass it happily and pleasantly; and therefore, what quantity soever they should find, that only excepted which was employed about the service of their gods, they might boldly take it. As touching one only God, the discourse of him had very well pleased them: but they would by no means change their religion, under which they had for so long time lived so happily and that they were not accustomed to take any counsel but of their friends and acquaintance. As concerning their menaces, it was a sign of want of judgement to threaten those whose nature, condition, power, and means was to them unknown. And therefore they should with all speed hasten to avoid their dominions, forsomuch as they were wont to admit or take in good part the kindnesses and remonstrances of armed people, namely, of strangers; otherwise they would deal with them as they had done with such others, showing them the heads of certain men sticking upon stakes about their city, which had lately been executed.
Lo, here an example of the stammering of this infancy. But so it is, neither in this nor in infinite other places, where the Spaniards found not the merchandise they sought for, neither made stay or attempted any violence whatsoever other commodity the place yielded: witness my Cannibals. [83]
Of two the most mighty and glorious monarchs of that world and peradventure of all our western parts, kings over so many kings: the last they deposed and overcame. He of Peru, having by them been taken in a battle and set at so excessive a ransom that it exceedeth all belief and that truly paid, and by his conversation having given them apparent signs of a free, liberal, undaunted, and constant courage, and declared to be of a pure, noble, and well-composed understanding, a humour possessed the conquerors, after they had most insolently exacted from him a million, three hundred five and twenty thousand, and five hundred weights [84] of gold; besides the silver and other precious things, which amounted to no less a sum (so that their horses were all shod of massive gold), to discover (what disloyalty or treachery soever it might cost them) what the remainder of this king’s treasure might be and without controlment enjoy whatever he might have hidden or concealed from them. Which to compass, they forged a false accusation and proof against him that he practised to raise his provinces and intended to induce his subjects to some insurrection so to procure his liberty. Whereupon, by the very judgement of those who had complotted this forgery and treason against him, he was condemned to be publicly hanged and strangled, having first made him to redeem the torment of being burned alive by the baptism [85] which at the instant of his execution in charity they bestowed upon him. A horrible and the like never heard-of accident, which nevertheless he undismayedly endured with an unmoved manner and truly-royal gravity, without ever contradicting himself either in countenance or speech. And then, somewhat to mitigate and circumvent those silly unsuspecting people, amazed and astonished at so strange a spectacle, they counterfeited a great mourning and lamentation for his death and appointed his funerals to be solemnly and sumptuously celebrated.
The other King, of Mexico, having a long time manfully defended his besieged city, and in the tedious siege showed whatever pinching-sufferance and resolute-perseverance can effect, if ever any courageous prince or war-like people showed the same; and his disastrous success ha
ving delivered him alive into his enemies’ hands, upon conditions to be used as beseemed a king; who during the time of his imprisonment, did never make the least show of any thing unworthy that glorious title. After which victory, the Spaniards, not finding that quantity of gold they had promised themselves, when they had ransacked and ranged all corners, they by means of the cruelest tortures and horriblest torments they could possibly devise, began to wrest and draw some more from such prisoners as they had in keeping. But unable to profit any thing that way, finding stronger hearts than their torments, they in the end fell to such moody outrages, that contrary to all law of nations and against their solemn vows and promises, they condemned the king himself and one of the chiefest princes of his court, to the rack, one in presence of another. The prince, environed round with hot burning coals, being overcome with the exceeding torment, at last in most piteous sort turning his dreary eyes toward his master, as if he asked mercy of him for that he could endure no longer. The king, fixing rigorously and fiercely his looks upon him, seeming to upbraid him with his remissness and pusillanimity, [86] with a stern and settled voice, uttered these few words unto him: What, supposest thou I am in a cold bath? Am I at more ease than thou art? Whereat the silly [87] wretch immediately fainted under the torture and yielded up the ghost. The king, half roasted, was carried away, not so much for pity (for what ruth could ever enter so barbarous minds, who upon the surmised information of some odd piece or vessel of gold they intended to get, would broil a man before their eyes, and not a man only, but a king, so great in fortune and so renowned in desert?), but forsomuch as his unmatched constancy did more and more make their inhumane cruelty ashamed. They afterward hanged him because he had courageously attempted by arms to deliver himself out of so long captivity and miserable subjection, where he ended his wretched life, worthy an high-minded and never-daunted prince.