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BOOK I, CHAPTER XXXI 269
state alien to our conditions of civilisation — a state which Montaigne is inclined to consider — as Rousseau does — a state of nature. Mon- talgne does Nor call ft S6;—ahd indeed he is less interested, evidently, about this point than in the fact that “every one calls dardarie whatever is not his own custom.”
Montaigne’s thoughts had been turned in this direction by the com- paratively recent discovery of America, more especially by the really recent interest of the French in South America — which they called /a France antartique.
A few dates may be helpful in enabling us to enter into the views held by Montaigne and his contemporaries.
It should be remembered that Columbus died (in 1506) in the firm belief that his discoveries were parts of Asia; and it was not till 1513 that the Pacific Ocean was made known (by Balboa), a discovery that Montaigne seems not to have appreciated. The conquest of Mexico, by Cortez, was in 1519-1521, and that of Peru, by Pizarro, in 1531-1532. We shall see later (in the Essay “Of Coaches”) how much Montaigne had occupied himself with the conditions of the civilisations thus made known — which were called barbarisms.
M. Gilbert Chinard in an interesting chapter on Montaine as “ung defenseur des Indiens,” in his L’Exotisme Americain (1911), remarks on the essential difference of tone between this Essay on Cannibals and that on Coaches, written many years later. M. Chinard expresses a somewhat strange surprise that Montaigne, in this earlier Essay, says nothing of the atrocities of the Spaniards toward the French, and he offers, as a possible explanation, a belief that Montaigne was opposed by his principles to all colonial enterprises, and was convinced that his fellow countrymen had no right over Brazil, and that those who had gone thither as fortune-seekers had had only the luck they deserved.
Later, the moral problem created by the conquest of America inter- ested him; and, while, in this first Essay, we perceive only the results of his curiosity, his love of investigation, his liking for picturesque details, in the later one we feel that his conscience has been touched; he con- siders the matter from a wider point of view, and he puts himself clearly on the side of the original possessors of the country against their bar- barous conquerors, as a defender of the Right and of Humanity.
The peoples with whom Montaigne chiefly concerned himself in this Essay were those of Brazil, which was discovered in 1550 — first by the Spaniards, and a few months later by the Portuguese, who obtained the mastery. In 1555-1560 the amiral de Coligny made an attemnt to found a Protestant settlement in America. Chevalier Nicolaus Durard de Villegaignon in 1555 led two ships to Brazil, and founded a colony on an island in the Bay of Rio de Janeiro.. Geneva sent fourteen mission- aries thither, but Villegaignon suddenly joined-the Catholic Church, and his defection ruined the colony. Many of the settlers returned to France in 1§57, — when Montaigne was twenty-four years old, — and probably later the particular wanderer came back, from whom Montaigne says he gained much of the information he here dwells on. It is to be feared that