Having seen Diego safely started, Columbus, with Bartholomew, two hundred and twenty Spaniards, and twenty other bloodhounds, started to attack the savages. He met a hundred thousand of them—so the story goes—and defeated them with great slaughter. It is very probable that the number of the enemy was exaggerated, and that there were not more than ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-six, with perhaps two small-boys. There is no doubt, however, that they were shot down by the soldiers, ridden down by the horses, and mangled by the dogs to an immense extent, and that the battle was a glorious triumph of civilization over barbarism.

The victory was followed up by Columbus with energy. He marched through almost the entire length and breadth of the island, and compelled the caciques to make peace and pay a heavy tribute to the Spaniards. Every native was taxed either a certain amount of gold or its equivalent in cotton, according to Columbus’s view of their relative value; and to secure his conquest, the Admiral built and garrisoned forts in different parts of the island, the most important of which was called Fort Concepcion, and was situated in the beautiful plain lying back of Isabella. Even Guacanagari and his people, who had remained faithful to Columbus, were taxed as heavily as the hostile natives, and that amiable cacique was so disgusted by this reward of his fidelity that he resigned his chieftainship and died of what in the case of a white monarch would be called a broken heart.

The yoke that the Spaniards had put on the native neck was too heavy to be borne. The savages resolved to starve their oppressors, and with this view destroyed their crops and retired to the mountains, to live on roots until the Spaniards should die of starvation. The plan was not successful. The Spaniards hunted the natives with dogs and dragged them back to work as slaves. Within a few months the free and happy people who had welcomed the Spaniards to the island, and were ready to worship them as superior beings, were converted into a horde of cowed and wretched slaves.

In later years, when Columbus had seen his own authority in Hispaniola set aside, and the island under the control of his rivals and enemies, he protested that the sight of the sufferings of the unhappy natives filled him with grief and horror. It was, however, to his political advantage at just that time to have his heart bleed for the poor savages, and the unprejudiced reader must regret that it did not bleed at an earlier period. It was under the immediate rule of Columbus that the natives of Hispaniola were first reduced to slavery, and it was Columbus who made his old friend and faithful ally, Guacanagari, suffer the same fate as the chiefs who had rebelled against the Spaniards. Then it cannot be forgotten that, in spite of the direct and repeated commands of Queen Isabella, Columbus sent cargo after cargo of slaves to Spain. He may have been very sorry to see the natives oppressed by Spaniards whom he disliked, but he certainly oppressed them quite as vigorously as did any of his successors. The contrast between his pious and humane protestations and his acts as an oppressor and a slave-trader is not easily explicable if we adopt the usual theory that he was one of the most sincere and noble of men. We may concede that he was naturally kind-hearted, and that he would have preferred gold-mining to slave-hunting; but when his interest urged him to cruelty, he usually listened to it with respectful attention, and straightway showed by his conduct that, although he was not a countryman of Ojeda and Pizarro, he was not altogether unfit to hold a Spanish commission.

CHAPTER XIV.
DIFFICULTIES AND DISCOURAGEMENTS.

[Æt. 59; 1495]

Margarite and Father Boyle, as has been mentioned, had sailed for Spain while Columbus was absent on his cruise in search of China. Arriving in Spain, they told a series of able and effective falsehoods, judiciously seasoned with a little genuine truth. They said it gave them the greatest pain to speak in disparaging terms of their superior officer, but a stern sense of duty compelled them to say that the misguided man was a liar and a scoundrel. All the Admiral’s stories of fertile islands, rich gold-mines, delightful climate, and amiable heathens clamoring for conversion, were without any foundation. Hispaniola was a wretched, fever-stricken place, wholly unfit for colonization. As for Columbus and his brother Bartholomew, they were cruel tyrants, who required Spanish gentlemen to work and made sick men get out of their beds, where they were comparatively comfortable, in order to engage in ridiculous expeditions after gold that never existed. Of the two, Don Bartholomew was perhaps the more objectionable, which was unfortunate, inasmuch as the Admiral, having put to sea in search of more of his worthless islands, had undoubtedly been drowned.

It must be confessed that, in one respect, Margarite and Boyle did tell the truth. There were chills and fever in the new colony, and when the King and Queen saw the returned colonists visibly shaking before them, they believed in the unhealthfulness of Hispaniola and all the accompanying lies told by the malicious and malarious complainants. They therefore resolved to send one Diego Carillo to Hispaniola as an investigating committee, to ascertain if there was anybody capable of telling the exact truth about the state of affairs.

But before Carillo could sail, Don Diego Columbus arrived, and as he brought considerable gold with him, the monarchs formed the opinion that he had the air of a man of strict veracity. He admitted that there was a part of the island of Hispaniola, a long distance from the colony, where it was said that chills and fever prevailed, and he was inclined to believe that the report was true. As for the climate of Isabella and its vicinity, he regarded it as exceptionally healthful. He reported that the Admiral had positively been to the mainland of China, and regretted that he had thoughtlessly forgotten to bring back confirmatory tea-chests.

Don Diego further assured the King and Queen that since the fortunate departure from Hispaniola of two objectionable persons whom he would not name, but who, he was informed, had recently arrived in Spain with a full cargo of assorted falsehoods, the affairs of the colony had been very prosperous. Of course, to bold and restless spirits there was a certain monotony in swinging in hammocks all day long, and eating delicious fruit, in a climate that was really perfect, and there were men who even grew tired of picking up nuggets of gold; but Don Diego was confident that, with a very few exceptions, the colonists enjoyed their luxurious life and, on the whole, preferred Hispaniola to Paradise.