February wheeled by. March was here, and every day the sun sent us more heat.
The Indians around us still were friendly—women and all. From the first there was straying in the woods with Indian women. Doubtless now, in the San Salvador islands, in Cuba and in Hispaniola, among those Guaricos fled from us to the mountains, would be infants born of Spanish fathers. Juan Lepe contemplated that filling in the sea between Asia and Europe with the very blood.
Sickness broke out. It was not such as that first sickness at La Navidad, but here were many more to lie ill. Besides Juan Lepe, we now possessed three physicians. They were skillful, they labored hard, we all labored. Men died of the malady, but no great number. But now among the idle of mind and soul and the factious arose the eternal murmur. Not heaven but hell, these new lands! Not wealth and happy ease, but poverty and miserable toil! Not forever new spectacle and greedy wonder, but tiresome river, forest and sea, tiresome blue heaven, tiresome delving and building, tiresome rules, restrictions, commandments, yeas and nays! Parties arose, two main parties, and within each lesser differings.
The Viceroy stiffly withstood the party that was not his, and upon some slur and insolence took from a man his office. Followed a week of glassy smoothness. Then suddenly, by chance, was discovered the plot of Bernal Diaz de Pisa—the first of many Spanish conspiracies. It involved several hundred men and was no less a thing than the seizure in the dark night of the ships and the setting sail for Spain, there to wreck the fame of Christopherus Columbus and if possible obtain the sending out of some prince over him, who would beam kindly on all hidalgos and never put them to vulgar work. A letter was found in Bernal Diaz’s hand, and if therein any ill was left unsaid of the Admiral and Viceroy, I know not what it might be! The “Italian”, the “Lowborn”, the “madly arrogant and ambitious”, the “cruel” and “violent”, the “tyrant” acted. Bernal Diaz was made and kept prisoner on Vicente Pinzon’s ship. Of his following one out of ten lay in prison for a month. Of the seamen concerned three were flogged and all had their pay estopped.
One might say that Isabella was builded. Columbus himself stood and moved in better health. Now he would go discovering on dry land, to Alonso de Ojeda’s glee, glee indeed of many. The mountains of Cibao, where might be the gold,—and gold must be had!
And we might find Caonabo, and what peoples were behind our own mountains, and perhaps come upon Guacanagari. We went, four hundred men and more, an army with banners. We wished to impress, and we took any and all things that might help in that wise. Drum and trumpet beat and sang. Father Buil was not with us. But three of his missionaries accompanied us, and they carried a great crucifix. There were twenty horses, and terrible were these to this land as the elephants of the Persians to the Greeks. And much we marveled that Cuba and Hayti had no memory nor idea of elephants. A throng of Indians would go with us, and in much they carried our supplies. It was first seen clearly at this time, I think, the uses that might be drawn from our heathen subjects. Alonso de Ojeda, Juan Ponce de Leon and Pedro Margarite rode with the Admiral. Others followed on black and bay and white horses. Juan Lepe marched with the footmen. He was glad to find Luis Torres.
Before setting out we went to mass in the new church. Candles burned, incense rose in clouds, the friars chanted, the bell rang, we took the wafer, the priest lifted the chalice.
The sun rose, the trumpets rang, we were gone. South, before us, the mountain line was broken by a deep notch. That would be our pass, afar, and set high, filled with an intense, a burning sapphire. We had Indian guides.
Day, evening, camp and night. Dawn, trumpets, breakfast and good understanding and jollity. After breakfast the march, and where was any road up the heights? And being none we would make one and did, our hidalgos toiling with the least. By eve we were in the high pass, level ground under our feet, above us magnificent trees. We called it the Pass of the Hidalgos. We threw ourselves down and slept. At sunrise we pushed on, and presently saw what Juan Lepe once before had seen, the vast southward-lying plain and the golden mountains of Cibao.
There rose a cry, it was so beautiful! The Admiral named it Vega Real, the Royal Plain.
Sweating, panting, we came at last down that most difficult descent into rolling forest and then to a small bright stream, beside it garden patches and fifty huts. The inhabitants fled madly, we heard their frightened shouts and the screaming of children. Thereafter we tried to keep in advance a small body of Indians, so that they might tell that the gods were coming, but that they would not injure.
Acclivity and declivity fell away. We were fully in an enormous, fertile and populous plain.
The horses and the horsemen! At first they thought that these were one. When some cowering group was surrounded and kept from breaking away, when Alonso de Ojeda or another leaped from steed to earth, from earth again to steed, they moaned with astonishment and some relief. But the horses, the horses—never to have seen any great four-footed things, and now these that were proud and pawed the earth and neighed and—De Ojeda’s black horse—reared, curvetted, bounded, appeared to threaten! The eyes, the mane, the great teeth!—There grew a legend that they were fed upon men’s flesh, red men’s flesh!
How many red men were in Quisquaya I do not know. In some regions they dwelled thickly, in others were few folk. In this wide, long, laughing plain dwelled many, in clean towns sunk among trees good to look at and dropping fruit; by river or smaller stream, with plantings of maize, batata, cassava, jucca, maguey, and I know not what beside. If the stream was a considerable one, canoes. They had parrots; they had the small silent dogs. In some places we saw clay pots and bowls. They wove their cotton, though not very skillfully. They crushed their maize in hand mills. We found caciques and butios, and heard of their main cacique, Gwarionex. But he did not come to meet us; they said he had gone on a visit to Caonabo in Cibao. They brought us food and took our gifts in exchange; they harangued us in answer to our harangues; they made dances for us. The children thronged around, fearless now and curious. The women were kind. Old men and women together, and sometimes more women than men, sat in a council ring about some venerable tree.
There was no quarrel and no oppression upon this adventure. I look back and I see that single journey in Hispaniola a flower and pattern of what might be.
They gave us what gold they had—freely—and we gave in return things that they prized. But always they said Cibao for gold.
We rode and marched afoot, with many halts and turns aside, five leagues across plain. A large river barred our way,—the Yaqui they called it. Here we spent two days in a village a bowshot from the water. We searched for gold, we sent from Indian to Indian rumor that it was the highest magic, god-magic that of all things in the world we most desired and took it from their hands, yet still we paid for it in goods for which they lusted, and we neither forced nor threatened force. And though we were four hundred, yet there might be in the Royal Plain forty thousand, and their hue and their economy was yet prince in the land, and the Spaniard a visitor. And there commanded the four hundred a humane man, with something of the guilelessness of the child.
We crossed the Yaqui in canoes and upon rafts. White, brown and black, the horses swam the stream. Again nigh impenetrable forest, again villages, again clear singing and running waters. But ever the mountains came closer. At last we entered hilly country and the streams pushed with rapidity, flowing to the Yaqui, flowing to the sea. Now we began to find gold. It glistened in the river sands. Sometimes we found nuts of it, washed from the rocks far above. There came upon us the gold fever. Mines—we must open mines! Fermin Cedo, our essayer, would have it that it was not Ophir, but at that time he was hardly believed. The Admiral wrote a letter about these golden mines.
An Indian brought him a piece of amber; another, a lump of blue stone. We found jasper, we were sure of copper.
We came to a natural rampart, wide at top, steeply descending on three sides, set in a loop of a little clear river named Yanique. “Ho!” cried Alonso de Ojeda. “Here is the cradle for the babe! Round tower, walls, barbican yonder, and Mother Nature has dug the moat!” He sent his voice across to the Viceroy. “A fort, senor, a fort!”
Council was held by the Yanique. A fort,—a luckier than La Navidad! Men left here to collect gold, establish a road, keep communication with Isabella which in turn should forward supplies and men. The returning fleet might bring two thousand—nay, five thousand men! It would certainly bring asses and mules as well as horses. We should have burden-bearers. Moreover, a company of Indians might be trained to come and go as carriers. Train them, set some sort of penalty for malfeasance.
“They should be taught to mine for us,” said Pedro Margarite. “Pay them? Of course—of course! But do not pay them too much. Do not we protect them from Caribs and save their souls to boot? Take it as tribute!” It was the first time the word was said, in Spanish, here.
We built a fort much after the model of La Navidad and named it St. Thomas. When after days it was done, and commandant must be chosen, the Viceroy’s choice fell upon Pedro Margarite. And that was great pity. But he could not know Margarite then as afterwards he came to know him. Fifty-six men he left with Margarite, and the rest of us marched home across the Vega and the northern mountains to Isabella.
Sickness. Quarrels. Idleness, vanity, dissensions and accusations. Heat, more sickness, wild quarrels.
Tidings from Margarite at St. Thomas. The Indians would no longer bring food. Caonabo was threatening from the higher mountains. The Viceroy wrote to Margarite. Compel the Indians to bring food, but as it were to compel them gently!
Quarrels—quarrels at Isabella. Two main parties and all the lesser ones. Disease and scarcity. Fray Geronimo arrived from St. Thomas. He had stories. The Viceroy grew dark red, his eyes lightened. Yet he believed that what was told pertained to men of Margarite, not to that cavalier himself. He wrote to Margarite—I do not know what. But presently a plan arose in his mind and was announced. Don Alonso de Ojeda was to command St. Thomas. Don Pedro Margarite should have a moving force of several hundred Castilians, mainly for exploration, but at need for other things. Going here and there about the country, it might impress upon Caonabo that the Spaniard though gentle by nature, was dangerous when aroused.
Alonso de Ojeda, three hundred men behind him, went forth on his black horse, to trumpet and drum, very gay and ready to go. In a week he sent into Isabella six Indians in chains. These had set upon three of Margarite’s men coming with a letter to the Viceroy and had robbed them, though without doing them bodily injury. Alonso de Ojeda had cut off their ears and sent them all in heavily chained. The Viceroy condemned them to be beheaded, but when they were on their knees before the block reprieved them, one by one. He kept them chained for a time for all visiting Indians to see, then formally pardoned them and let them go.
Matters quieted. Sickness again sank, a flood retiring, leaving pools. Alonso de Ojeda and Pedro Margarite reported peace in Hispaniola. The Admiral came forth from his house one day and said quietly to this one and that one that now he meant again to take up Discovery.
He gave authority in Isabella to Don Diego, and made him a council where sat Father Buil, Caravajal, Coronel and Juan de Luxan. Then out of five ships we took the Cordera, the Santa Clara and the San Juan, and we set sail on April the twenty-fourth.
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