four of the vessels and put into the principal ship, which was given in charge to persons in whom he could place implicit confidence.*

This was the first time Columbus exercised the right of punishing delinquents in his new government, and it immediately awakened the most violent animadversions. His measures, though necessary for the general safety and characterized by the greatest lenity, were censured as arbitrary and vindictive. Already the disadvantage of being a foreigner among the people he was to govern was clearly manifested. He had national prejudices to encounter, of all others the most general and illiberal. He had no natural friends to rally round him; whereas the mutineers had connections in Spain, friends in the colony, and met with sympathy in every discontented mind. An early hostility was thus engendered against Columbus, which continued to increase throughout his life, and the seeds were sown of a series of factions and mutinies which afterwards distracted the island.

*Herrera, Hist. Ind., decad. i., lib. ii., cap. II. Hist. del Almirante, cap. 30.

VOL. II.-8

Chapter IX.

EXPEDITION OF COLUMBUS TO THE MOUNTAINS OF

H

CIBAO.

[1494.]

AVING at length recovered from his long illness, and the mutiny at the settlement being effectually checked,, Columbus prepared for his immediate departure for Cibao. He intrusted the command of the city and the ships during his absence to his brother Don Diego, appointing able persons to counsel and assist him. Don Diego is represented by Las Casas, who knew him personally, as a man of great merit and discretion, of a gentle and pacific disposition, and more characterized by simplicity than shrewdness. He was sober in his attire, wearing almost the dress of an ecclesiastic, and Las Casas thinks he had secret hopes of preferment in the Church *; indeed Columbus

*Las Casas, Hist Ind., lib. i., cap. 82, MS.

intimates as much when he mentions him in his will.

As the Admiral intended to build a fortress in the mountains and to form an establishment for working the mines, he took with him the necessary artificers, workmen, miners, munitions, and implements. He was also about to enter the territories of the redoubtable Caonabo. It was important, therefore, to take with him a force that should not only secure him against any warlike opposition, but should spread through the country a formidable idea of the power of the white men, and deter the Indians from any future violence, either towards communities or wandering individuals. Every healthy person therefore who could be spared from the settlement was put in requisition, together with all the cavalry that could be mustered; and every arrangement was made to strike the savages with the display of military splendor.

On the 12th of March Columbus set out at the head of about four hundred men well armed and equipped, with shining helmets and corselets; with arquebuses, lances, swords, and cross-bows, and followed by a multitude of the neighboring Indians. They sallied from the city in martial array, with banners flying, and sound of drum and trumpet.

Their march for the first day was across the plain between the sea and the mountains, fording two rivers, and passing through a fair and verdant country. They encamped in the evening in the midst of pleasant fields, at the foot of a wild and rocky pass of the mountains.

The ascent of this rugged defile presented formidable difficulties to the little army, encumbered as it was with various implements and munitions. There was nothing but an Indian footpath, winding among rocks and precipices, or through brakes and thickets, entangled by the rich vegetation of a tropical forest. A number of high-spirited young cavaliers volunteered to open a route for the army. They had probably learnt this kind of service in the Moorish wars, where it was often necessary on a sudden to open roads for the march of troops, and the conveyance of artillery across the mountains of Granada. Throwing themselves in advance with laborers and pioneers, whom they stimulated by their example as well as by promises of liberal reward, they soon constructed the first road formed in the New World, and which was called El Puerto de los Hidalgos, or The Gentleman's Pass, in honor of the gallant cavaliers who effected it.*

* Hist. del Almirante, cap. 50. Hidalgo, i.e., Hijo de Algo, literally, a son of somebody," in contra

On the following day the army toiled up this steep defile, and arrived where the gorge of the mountain opened into the interior. Here a land of promise suddenly burst upon their view. It was the same glorious prospect which had delighted Ojeda and his companions. Below lay a vast and delicious plain, painted and enamelled, as it were, with all the rich variety of tropical vegetation. The magnificent forests presented that mingled beauty and majesty of vegetable forms known only to these generous climates. Palms of prodigious height and spreading mahogany trees towered from amid a wilderness of variegated foliage. Freshness and verdure were maintained by numerous streams, which meandered gleaming through the deep bosom of the woodland; while various villages and hamlets, peeping from among the trees, and the smoke of others rising out of the midst of the forest, gave signs of a numerous population. The luxuriant landscape extended as far as the eye could reach, until it appeared to melt away and mingle with the horizon. The Spaniards gazed with rapture upon this soft voluptuous country, which seemed to realize their ideas of a terrestrial paradise, and Columbus, struck with its vast distinction to an obscure and low-born man, a son of nobody.