has been inflicted in America. As the aged frame of the dying man yielded to the dreadful pressure, his tongue protruded from his mouth, and the sheriff thrust it back again with the point of his cane!

The parting scene between Mary Easty and her husband, children, and friends, is described as having been as serious, religious, distinct, and affectionate as could well be expressed, drawing tears from the eyes of almost all present. She was hanged with the others. 'There hang eight firebrands of hell,' said Noyes, the minister of Salem, pointing to the bodies hanging on the gallows.

Although satisfactory to the malignant bigoted, these executions did not meet with universal approbation. The atrocities were too great to be endured, and served to raise a reaction against the witchcraft delusion. The common mind of Massachusetts,' observes Chandler, ' more wise than those in authority and influence, became concentrated against such monstrous proceedings, and jurors refused to convict while the judicial power was yet unsatisfied with victims. Already twenty persons had suffered death; more than fifty had been tortured or terrified into confession; the jails were full, and hundreds were under suspicion. Where was this to end? Moreover, the frauds and imposture attending these scenes began to be apparent. It was observed, that no one of the condemned confessing witchcraft had been hanged; no one who confessed and retracted a confession escaped either hanging or imprisonment for trial. Favouritism had been shewn in refusing to listen to accusations which were directed against friends or partisans. Corrupt means had been used to tempt people to become accusers, and accusations began to be made against the most respectable inhabitants of the province and some ministers. It was also observed that the trials were not fairly conducted: they were but a form to condemn the accused. No one brought to the bar escaped, and all who were cried out upon expected death. The wife of the wealthiest person in Salem, a merchant, and a man of the highest respectability, being accused, the warrant was read to her in the evening in her bed-chamber, and guards were placed round the house. In the morning, she attended the devotions of her family, gave instructions for the education of her children, kissed them, commended them to God, bade them farewell, and committed herself to the sheriff, declaring her readiness to die. Such a state of things could not continue long in any age, whilst the essential elements of human nature remain the same. No wonder the miserable creatures who endured these sufferings felt that New England was indeed deserted by God.'

The court made several attempts to go on with its trials, but the grand-juries dismissed the cases, and the executions were accordingly stopped. 'The causes of this change in public opinion,' proceeds our authority, are variously stated. Some attribute it to the fact, that the wife of the minister of Beverly being accused, he

immediately changed his mind in regard to the propriety of the prosecutions, and thenceforward opposed, as zealously as he had previously encouraged them. Others relate that the wife of a gentleman in Boston being accused, he brought an action for slander, claiming a thousand pounds damages; and that this turned back the current of accusations. But such causes were inadequate to the effect. These incidental facts were rather the result of the change that was taking place, than the cause of it. The force of public sentiment, which had hanged one minister, could scarcely have been resisted by the efforts of another. An action at law, sounding in damages, would hardly stop the mouths of accusing witnesses, who professed to have given themselves to the powers of darkness. The cause of the change is rather to be sought in the principles of our nature, and is to be found partly in that instinctive effort for self-preservation, which, in communities of individuals, unites the weak against oppression, and gives courage to the feeble and unprotected. A belief in witchcraft was one of the superstitions of the age; and the change of public sentiment, which now took place, was not so much a loss of faith in its reality, as a conviction of the uselessness and danger of punishing it by human laws. Of the causes of the transient delusion, which rose so high, and terminated so fatally, among the sober and godly people of New England, no definite explanation can, at this distance of time, be given; but their descendants may be allowed, in the same spirit of trust in Providence which distinguished them, to cherish the belief, that it was permitted for purposes of wisdom and benevolence, which could not otherwise have been accomplished. When its work was done, it properly ceased. Such moral desolations often pass over the face of society: the thunder-storm does its work-the atmosphere becomes clear-the sun shines forth, and reveals to all the work of death.

'The change in the public mind was complete and universal. Bitter was the lamentation of the whole community for the sad consequences of their rashness and delusion; contrite the repentance of all who had been actors in the tragedy. The indignation of the people, not loud, but deep and strong, was directed with resistless force against those who had been particularly active in these insane enormities. Parris, the minister who had been the chief agent in these acts of frenzy and folly, and who, beyond all question, made use of the popular feeling to gratify his own malignant feelings of revenge against obnoxious individuals, was compelled to leave his people. No entreaties were of any avail; the humblest confession could not save him; it was not fitting that he should minister at the altar of a merciful God, within sight of the graves of those whose entreaties for mercy he had despised. Noyes, the minister of Salem, consecrated his life to deeds of mercy; made a full confession; loved and blessed the survivors whom he had injured; asked forgiveness of all, and was by all forgiven. Cotton Mather, by artful

appeals and publications, in which he wilfully suppressed the truth, succeeded for a while in deceiving the public, and perhaps himself, as to the encouragement he had given to the proceedings at Salem. Still eager "to lift up a standard against the infernal enemy," he got up a case of witchcraft in his own parish; but the imposture was promptly exposed to ridicule, and came to nothing. Mather died in 1727; his latter years being imbittered by the contempt of many persons for his frenzied zeal in the witch prosecutions; and it would appear that, before his death, he had occasional doubtings and qualms of conscience on the same grave subject.'

The belief in witchcraft gradually died out in America, as it has done in this country, and only lingered a clandestine existence among the most ignorant in the community. Whether in England, Wales, and Scotland, the belief is yet utterly gone, may perhaps be doubted; for paragraphs occasionally appear in the newspapers descriptive of outrages committed on old women, who are supposed by the ignorant to practise diabolical incantations. Within our own recollection, which extends to the first decade of the present century, a belief in witchcraft was to a certain degree entertained in a small country town in Scotland. It was whispered about among children, that a certain old woman was a witch, and in passing the thatched cottage of this poor creature, we were instructed by companions to put our thumb across one of our fingers, as a preservative from harm -a curious relic of the old usage of making the figure of the cross.

As a crime recognised and punishable by law, witchcraft was protracted till comparatively recent times in certain continental countries. So lately as 1780, a woman was condemned and executed for witchcraft in the Swiss canton of Glarus. In January 1853, an account appeared in a foreign journal, significant of the superstitious belief which still maintains its hold among the less-instructed classes in the north of Italy; and with this strange record of witchcraft in the nineteenth century, we may appropriately dismiss the subject:

'A very singular case was a short time ago submitted to the Court of Justice of Rovigo, in the Lombardo-Venetian kingdom. Several of the inhabitants of the island of Cherso had constructed a limekiln; but the fire, after burning constantly for twelve days, and thereby giving a promise that the operation would be a successful one, became suddenly extinguished, and all attempts to relight it failed. An old woman, named Anna Gurlan, who was considered a sorceress, was immediately suspected of having, by her charms, extinguished the fire, and it was stated that she had been seen walking in a mysterious way round the kiln, and had passed a night in an adjacent house. On this the people to whom the kiln belonged resolved that they would make the old woman undo her charm and relight the fire. In compliance with the request of one of them, Giuseppe Micich, she one morning went to the kiln, carrying with her a bottle of holy water. She then began blessing the kiln and

reciting litanies. While so engaged, a priest went to her, and told her that if she would remain until the fire should spring up again, he would pay her well. She asked if he thought she was a sorceress, or possessed of heavenly powers; and he answered, that she might probably be more favoured by grace than he was. He then left her, and she continued her incantations. But as the fire did not return, Micich and his companions swore that they would kill and burn her if she did not succeed; and they assured her that they had an axe and a furnace ready. At the same time, they heaped maledictions on her for having, by her infernal arts, extinguished the fire. Greatly terrified, she implored them to have pity on her, and, when a favourable opportunity presented itself, she took to flight. The house to which she went was closed against her, and Micich and his companions, having gone in pursuit, seized her with great brutality, and threatened more violently than before to kill her if she would not put an end to the charm. She then began reciting prayers, but as no effect was produced, the men deliberated as to what they should do. They at length resolved to consult a retired sea-captain, called the "American," from his having been to America, who possessed a great reputation in the neighbourhood as an authority in matters of witchcraft. He refused to go, lest, as he said, the sorceress should bewitch his children, but he directed what should be done. In execution of his instructions, the old woman was placed on a chair close to the kiln; Micich then cut off a piece of her garments and a lock of her hair, and threw them both in the kiln, retaining, however, a portion of the hair, which he placed in his pocket; half an hour was then allowed to elapse; Micich then took his knife and made three cuts on her forehead, causing blood to flow abundantly; then another half-hour elapsed, and he made three cuts in the back part of the head; then another half-hour was suffered to pass, and he made three cuts in the cartilage of her left ear. While all this was going on, she begged them, in the name of God, to kill her at once, sooner than subject her to such torture. At length, when they had, as she supposed, executed to the letter all the instructions of the American, they ceased to hold her, and she fled to a wood, where she wandered about all night. The next morning she went home; but the injuries she had sustained were such, that she was obliged to keep her bed for twenty-six days. After the facts had been proved, Micich, being called on by the court for his defence, gravely asserted that the kiln had been burning well enough until the old woman had been seen hanging about it; and he brought witnesses to prove that she was fond of talking in a mysterious way, and of meddling in her neighbours' affairs; that when she could not get what she wished for, she was accustomed to make threats of death against adults and children; and that more than once, chance apparently caused her menaces to be fulfilled. The court condemned Micich to three months' imprisonment, and to pay an indemnity to the old woman.'

HE portion of the New World earliest colonised by the Spaniards was the island of St Domingo, Hayti, or Hispaniola, discovered by Columbus in his first voyage in the year 1492. For nearly twenty years this island was the only colony of importance held by the Spaniards in the New World; here alone did they occupy lands, build towns, and found a regular commonwealth. Cuba, although the second of the islands discovered by Columbus, remained long uncolonised; indeed it was not till the year 1509 that it was circumnavigated, and ascertained to be an island. At length, in 1511, Don Diego Columbus, the great admiral's son, governor of Hispaniola, despatched a force of three hundred men, under Don Diego Velasquez, to take possession of the island. Velasquez soon subdued the island, the natives of which offered but little resistance, and he was shortly afterwards appointed governor, subordinate to the governor of Hispaniola. Ambitious of sharing in the glory to be derived from the discovery of new countries, Velasquez fitted out one or two expeditions, which he despatched westward, to explore the seas in that direction. In one of these expeditions, which set out in 1517, commanded by a rich colonist called Cordova, the peninsula of Yucatan was discovered, and the existence of a large and rich country called Culua or Mexico ascertained. Elated with this discovery, Velasquez fitted out another expedition under his nephew, Juan de Grijalva, who, leaving Cuba in April 1518, spent No. 142.