Part 32 (1/2)

[Sidenote: 1494. March 12.]

It was the 12th of March when Columbus set out on his march. He conducted a military contingent of about 400 well-armed men, including what lancers he could mount. In his train followed an array of workmen, miners, artificers, and porters, with their burdens of merchandise and implements. A ma.s.s of the natives hovered about the procession.

[Sidenote: Columbus makes a road.]

[Sidenote: The Vega Real.]

Their progress was as martial as it could be made. Banners were flaunted. Drums and trumpets were sounded. Their armor was made to glisten. Crossing the low land, they came to a defile in the mountain.

There was nothing before them but a tortuous native trail winding upward among the rocks and through tangled forest. It was ill suited for the pa.s.sage of a heavily burdened force. Some of the younger cavaliers sprang to the front, and gathering around them woodmen and pioneers, they opened the way; and thus a road was constructed through the pa.s.s, the first made in the New World. This work of the proud cavaliers was called _El puerto de los Hidalgos_. The summit of the mountain afforded afresh the grateful view of the luxuriant valley which had delighted Ojeda,--royally rich as it was in every aspect, and deserving the name which Columbus now gave it of the Vega Real.

[Sidenote: Erects a cross.]

Here, on the summit of Santo Cerro, the tradition of the island goes that Columbus caused that cross to be erected which the traveler to-day looks upon in one of the side chapels of the cathedral at Santo Domingo.

It stood long enough to perform many miracles, as the believers tell us, and was miraculously saved in an earthquake. De Lorgues does not dare to connect the actual erection with the holy trophy of the cathedral.

Descending to the lowlands, the little army and its followers attracted the notice of the amazed natives by clangor and parade. This display was made more astounding whenever the horses were set to prancing, as they approached and pa.s.sed a native hamlet. Las Casas tells us that the first horseman who dismounted was thought by the natives to have parceled out a single creature into convenient parts. The Indians, timid at first, were enticed by a show of trinkets, and played upon by the interpreters.

Thus they gradually were won over to repay all kindnesses with food and drink, while they rendered many other kindly services. The army came to a large stream, and Columbus called it the River of Reeds. It was the same which, the year before, knowing it only where it emptied into the sea, he had called the River of Gold, because he had been struck with the s.h.i.+ning particles which he found among its sands. Here they encamped. The men bathed. They found everything about them like the dales of Paradise, if we may believe their rehearsals. The landscape was very different from that which Bernal Diaz was to tell of, if only once he got the ears of the Court in Seville.

[Sidenote: Cibao mountains.]

The river was so wide and deep that the men could not ford it, so they made rafts to take over everything but the horses. These swam the current. Then the force pa.s.sed on, but was confronted at last by the rugged slopes of the Cibao mountains. The soldiers clambered up the defile painfully and slowly. The pioneers had done what they could to smooth the way, but the ascent was wearying. They could occasionally turn from their toil to look back over this luxuriant valley which they were leaving, and lose their vision in its vast extent. Las Casas describes it as eighty leagues one way, and twenty or thirty the other.

[Sidenote: Fort St. Thomas.]

It was a scene of bewildering beauty that they left behind; it was one of sterile heights, scraggy pines, and rocky precipices which they entered. The leaders computed that they were eighteen leagues from Isabella, and as Columbus thought he saw signs of gold, amber, lapis lazuli, copper, and one knows not what else of wealth, all about him, he was content to establish his fortified position hereabouts, without pus.h.i.+ng farther. He looked around, and found at the foot of one of the declivities of the interior of this mountainous region a fertile plain, with a running river, gurgling over beds of jasper and marble, and in the midst of it a little eminence, which he could easily fortify, as the river nearly surrounded it like a natural ditch. Here he built his fort.

Recent travelers say that an overgrowth of trees now covers traces of its foundations. The fortress was, as he believed, so near the gold that one could see it with his eyes and touch it with his hands, and so, as Las Casas tells us, he named it St. Thomas.

The Indians had already learned to recognize the Christian's G.o.d. They found the golden deity in bits in the streams. They took the idol tenderly to his militant people. For their part, the poor natives much preferred rings and hawks' bells, and so a basis of traffic was easily found. In this way Columbus got some gold, but he more readily got stories of other spots, whither the natives pointed vaguely, where nuggets, which would dwarf all these bits, could be found. Columbus began to wonder why he never reached the best places.

[Sidenote: Country examined.]

[Sidenote: Columbus returns to Isabella.]

The Spaniards soon got to know the region better. Juan de Luxan, who had been sent out with a party to see what he could find, reported that the region was mountainous and in its upper parts sterile, to be sure, but that there were delicious valleys, and plenty of land to cultivate, and pasturing enough for herds. When he came back with these reports, the men put a good deal of heart in the work which they were bestowing on the citadel of St. Thomas, so that it was soon done. Pedro Margarite was placed in command with fifty-six men, and then Columbus started to return to Isabella.

[Sidenote: Natives of the valley.]

When the Admiral reached the valley, he met a train of supplies going forward to St. Thomas, and as there were difficulties of fording and other obstacles, he spent some time in examining the country and marking out lines of communication. This brought him into contact with the villages of the valley, and he grew better informed of the kind of people among whom his colonists were to live. He did not, however, discern that under a usually pacific demeanor there was no lack of vigorous determination in this people, which it might not be so wise to irritate to the point of vengeance. He found, too, that they had a religion, perhaps prompting to some virtues he little suspected in his own, and that they jealously guarded their idols. He discovered that experience had given them no near acquaintance with the medicinal properties of the native herbs and trees. They a.s.sociated myths with places, and would tell you that the sun and moon were but creatures of their island which had escaped from one of their caverns, and that mankind had sprung from the crannies of their rocky places. The bounteousness of nature, causing little care for the future, had spread among them a love of hospitality, and Columbus found himself welcome everywhere, and continued to be so till he and his abused their privileges.

[Sidenote: 1494. March 29. Columbus in Isabella.]

On the 29th of March, Columbus was back in Isabella, to find that the plantings of January were already yielding fruits, and the colony, in its agricultural aspects, at least, was promising, for the small areas that had already been cultivated. But the tidings from the new fort in the mountains which had just come in by messenger were not so cheering, for it seemed to be the story of La Navidad repeated. The license and exactions of the garrison had stirred up the neighboring natives, and Pedro Margarite, in his message, showed his anxiety lest Caonabo should be able to ma.s.s the savages, exasperated by their wrongs, in an attack upon the post. Columbus sent a small reinforcement to St. Thomas, and dispatched a force to make a better road thither, in order to facilitate any future operations.

[Sidenote: Condition of the town.]

The Admiral's more immediate attention was demanded by the condition of Isabella. Intermittent fever and various other disturbances incident to a new turning of a reeking soil were making sad ravages in the colony.

The work of building suffered in consequence. The sick engrossed the attention of men withdrawn from their active labors, or they were left to suffer from the want of such kindly aid. The humidity of the climate and a prodigal waste had brought provisions so low that an allowance even of the unwholesome stock which remained was made necessary. In order to provide against impending famine, men were taken from the public works and put to labor on a mill, in order that they might get flour. No respect was paid to persons, and cavalier and priest were forced into the common service. The Admiral was obliged to meet the necessities by compulsory measures, for even an obvious need did not prevent the indifferent from s.h.i.+rking, and the priest and hidalgo from a.s.serting their privileged rights. Any authority that enforced sacrifice galled the proud spirits, and the indignity of labor caused a mortification and despair that soon thinned the ranks of the best blood of the colony. Dying voices cursed the delusion which had brought them to the New World, the victims, as they claimed, of the avarice and deceit of a hated alien to their race.

[Sidenote: Ojeda sent to St. Thomas.]