The Middlebury register. [volume] (Middlebury, Vt.) 1850-1882, 1853-06-22
Down among the Dead EIen.

DR.. Reid, a traveller through the
highlands Of Peru, is said to have found
lately in in the desert of Ataoama. the
dried remains of an assemblage of beings,
fiye or six hundred in number, men, wo.
men and children, seated in a somi cir
Gle, as when alive, staring into the burn.
ing waste before them. They had not
be N buried life had not departed bo-
fore they thus sat around, but hope was
gone, the Spanish invaders were at hand,
and no escape being left. they had come
hither to die. They still sat immovablo
in that dreary desert dried like mum
mics by the cffoct of the hot air, they
still kept their position, sitting up as a
solemn council, while over that dread
Areopagus silence broods everlastingly
Let them remain there, as monuments
Of the gigantic wrongs perpctrated by a
christian people, against harmless
race. Let them remain in everlasting
silence. speaking no word, but forever
appealing, in solemn earnestness, for
vengeance on their cruel spoilers. Let
them sit there in dread council, where
hey came to die, with their face to the
desert, with the bright sun that they
worshiped above, and the free air of the
plains breathing upon them. till the hour
of retribution shall come. That hour is
advancing, with slow but sure approach
Spain, the greatest and most powerful
the proudest and most prosecuting o
nations, at the time in which they lived
mas, from the date of their spelling, beer
ldwindling away. Province after prov
nee has fallcu from around her, jewe
after jewel has dropped from her crown
until but one, of all the bright gems o
the new world that glisiencd in her di
adem, remains, aud even that is looseneC
TO speedy fall The very richness o
the spoil which resulted from her robber
les of the children OF the sun, hasteneC
her downfall. The treasures that wer,
carried home bred a disease that hai
, been and is undermining her constitution
and will be the cause OF her fiually deg
radiation. Where is now the old Hidal
20, the iron men Of Spain, the high hon
or, the renown, the strength, the indo
mitable courage and chivalry of Spanisl
kuighthood All gone. passed into his
, tony, leaving behind only etieminacy, de
q cay Punic faith aud false protensio
to chivalry and honor.
Tho old Spaniard, the stern, eudurn
soldier of false religion, who plundere
. 10 the name OF the Deity, and shed {
ceaus of human blood in the name of hi
c church, has passed away, and the ours
Of his cruel propagandisin is darknin
) over his descendants The retribu.ioI
r of heaven, which in the broad and jul
/ philosophy Of natare is sure sovner o
e later to follow wrong, are gathering
I. gainst them. While the world is
u motion, moving onward and upwar'
: while progress Is going on all aroun
) her, Spain, wrapped IN her gloomy 81
! perstitions, aud hugging the bigotry an
{ fanatcisln that have eaten away her '
K tality, sits gloomily by the waysid
. Already in the twilight Of her closil
}. day, the long night 90 which no morhiI
e succeeds will soon bo upon her, al
i these dried aud mummy-like victims
g her cruelties and wrongs, as they cit
Y their sileuL desolation in the 6 Desert
d Atacama," will 500 in her dogradati'
le the answer to their appeal to heaven
d gainst their destroyer Albany Reg
le ter. ~ -ait hf