TWELVE of our ships went home to Spain.
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.