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, t............