and buds and blossoms gave promise of still succeeding abundance. What need was there of garnering up and anxiously providing for coming days, to men who lived amid a perpetual harvest? What need, too, of toilfully spinning or labouring at the loom, where a genial temperature prevailed throughout the year, and neither nature nor custom prescribed the necessity of clothing.

The hospitality which characterises men in such a simple and easy mode of existence was evinced towards Columbus and his followers, during their sojourn in the vega. Wherever they went it was a continual scene of festivity and rejoicing, and the natives hastened from all parts to lay the treasures of their groves, and streams, and mountains, at the feet of beings whom they still considered as descended from the skies, to bring blessings to their island.

As we accompany Columbus, in imagination, on his return to the harbour, over the rocky height from whence the vega first broke upon the eye of the Spaniards, we cannot help pausing, to cast back a look of mingled pity and admiration over this beautiful but devoted region. The dream of natural liberty and ignorant content was as yet unbroken, but the fiat had gone forth; the white man had penetrated into the land; avarice, and pride, and ambition, and sordid care, and pining labour, were soon to follow, and the indolent paradise of the Indian was about to disappear for ever.

CHAPTER XXII.

Sickness and Discontent at the Settlement of IsabellaPreparations of Columbus for a Voyage to Cuba. [1494.]

COLUMBUS had scarcely returned to the harbour, when a messenger arrived from Pedro Margarite, the commander at Fort St. Thomas, informing him that the Indians of the vicinity had abandoned their villages, and broken off all intercourse, and that he understood Caonabo was assembling his warriors to attack the fortress. From what the admiral had seen of the Indians in the interior, and the awe in which they stood of the white men and their horses, he felt little apprehensions from their hostility, and contented himself with sending a reinforcement of twenty men to the fortress, and detaching thirty more to open the road between it and the port. What gave him most anxiety was the distress which continued to increase in the settlement. The heat and humidity of the climate, which gave wonderful fecundity to the soil, and rapid growth to all European vegetables, were fatal to the people. The exhalations from undrained marshes, and a vast con.. tinuity of forest, and the action of the sun upon a reeking vegetable soil, produced intermittent fevers, and those other violent maladies so trying to European constitutions in the uncultivated countries

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of the tropics. The greater part of the colonists were either confined by illness, or reduced to great debility. The stock of medicines was exhausted, and European provisions began to fail, much having been spoiled and much wasted. To avert an absolute famine, it was necessary to put the people upon allowance; this immediately caused loud murmurs, in which many in office, who ought to have supported Columbus in his measures for the common safety, took a leading part. Among the number was Friar Boyle, who was irritated at finding that himself and his household were put on the same allowance with the rest of the community.

It was necessary also to construct a mill immediately to grind the corn, as all the flour was exhausted. Most of the workmen, however, were ill, and Columbus was obliged to put every healthy person in requisition, not even excepting cavaliers and gentlemen of rank. As many of the latter refused to comply, he enforced their obedience by compulsory measures. This was another cause of the deep and lasting hostilities that sprang up against him. He was inveighed against, both by the cavaliers in the colony and their families in Spain, as an upstart foreigner, inflated with sudden authority, and who, in pursuit of his own profit and aggrandizement, trampled upon the dignity of Spanish gentlemen, and insulted the honour of the nation.

The fate, in truth, of many of the young cavaliers who had come out in this expedition, deluded by romantic dreams, was lamentable in the extreme. Some of them, of noble and opulent connexions, had been brought up in ease and indulgence, and were little calculated to endure the hardships and

privations of a new settlement in the wilderness. When they fell ill, their case soon became incurable. They suffered under the irritation of wounded pride, and the morbid melancholy of disappointed hope; their sick bed was destitute of the tender care and soothing attention to which they had been accustomed, and they sank into the grave in all the sullenness of despair, cursing the day that they had left their country. So strong an effect had the untimely and dreary death of these cavaliers upon the public mind that, many years afterwards, when the settlement of Isabella was abandoned, and had fallen to ruins, its deserted streets were said to be haunted by their spectres, walking about in ancient Spanish dresses, saluting the wayfarer in stately and mournful silence, and vanishing on being accosted. Their melancholy story was insidiously made use of by the enemies of the admiral; for it was said that they had been seduced from their homes by his delusive promises, and sacrificed by him to his private interests.

Columbus was desirous of departing on a voyage to explore the coast of Cuba, but it was indispensable, before sailing, to place the affairs of the island in such a state as to ensure tranquillity. For this purpose he determined to send all the men that could be spared from the concerns of the city, or the care of the sick, into the interior, where they could subsist among the natives, and become accustomed to their diet, while their force would overawe the machinations of Caonabo, or any other hostile cacique. A little army was accordingly mustered of two hundred and fifty cross-bow men, one hundred and ten arquebusiers, sixteen horsemen, and twenty officers. These were to be com

manded by Pedro Margarite, while Ojeda was to succeed him in the command of Fort St. Thomas.

Columbus wrote a long and earnest letter of instructions to Margarite, desiring him to make a military tour, and to explore the principal parts of the island; but enjoining on him the strictest discipline of his army, and the most vigilant care to protect the rights of the Indians, and cultivate their friendship. Ojeda set off at the head of the little army for the fortress; on his way he learned that three Spaniards had been robbed of their effects by five Indians, at the ford of one of the rivers of the vega, and that the delinquents had been sheltered by their cacique, who had shared their booty. Ojeda was a quick and impetuous soldier, whose ideas were all of a military kind. He seized one of the thieves, ordered his ears to be cut off in the public square of the village, and sent the cacique, with his son and nephew, in chains to the admiral, who, after terrifying them with preparations for a public execution, pretended to yield to the tears and entreaties of their friends, and set them at liberty.

Having thus distributed his forces about the island, and taken measures for its tranquillity, Columbus formed a junto for its government, of which his brother Don Diego was president, and Father Boyle, Pedro Fernandez Coronal, Alonzo Sanchez Caravajal, and Juan de Luxan, were counsellors. Leaving in the harbour two of his largest ships, which drew too much water to explore unknown coasts and rivers, he set sail on the 24th of April, with the Niña or Santa Clara, the San Juan, and the Cordera.