United States or French Polynesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He was now fourteen, Don Fernando, slim, intelligent, obedient and loving always to the Admiral. Days of bright weather, days and days of that marvelous favorable wind that blows over Ocean-Sea. The twenty-fifth of May the Canaries sank behind us. On and on, all the sails steady. We were not first for Hispaniola. All must be strange, this voyage! Jamaica, not San Domingo, was our star.
After cruising round Porto Rico and Hispaniola for two months, we bore up for the mole, where we found two sail of the line, a sixty-four and two sloops of war. In the course of our cruise we had sent in an American brig and a schooner laden with flour. The latter was condemned, half-barrels of gunpowder being found in the under flour casks.
According to their calculations, they had certainly come the distance from Jamaica at which Navasa lay. They began to fear that they had deviated from their course. If so, they should miss the island entirely, and perish with thirst before they could reach Hispaniola. The night closed upon them without any sight of the island.
He had been shown the letters from Bobadilla, and he who was not lengthy in speech had spoken an hour upon them. His word rang gold; Christ gave it, he said, that his truth was believed. Don Francisco de Bobadilla would quit Hispaniola though not in chains. Fray Juan Perez stirred the fire. Upon the table stood a flask of wine and a dish of figs. We were comfortable in La Rabida.
Before 1580, the western coast of Hispaniola had become a sort of colony, to which the desperate and the adventurous came in companies. The ships used to lie at anchor in the creeks, while a number of the men from each ship went ashore to hunt cattle and wild boars. Many of the sailors found the life of the hunter passing pleasant.
Morgan had appointed the Isle la Vache, or Cow Island, on the south side of Hispaniola, as the rendezvous for the privateers; and thither flocked great numbers, both English and French, for the name of Morgan was, by his exploit at Porto Bello, rendered famous in all the neighbouring islands. Here, too, arrived the "Oxford" in December.
All of these evils created bitter disappointment in Spain and discontent with the measures and government of Columbus himself, so that a commission of inquiry was sent to Hispaniola, headed by Aguado, who assumed arrogant authority, and made it necessary for Columbus to return to Spain without adding essentially to his discoveries.
He then touched at the island of Mona, ten leagues from Hispaniola, and eight from San Joan de Porto Rico. Leaving Mona, where the Spaniards got most delicious melons as large as a two gallon vessel, the admiral was siezed by a violent lethargy in which he lost his senses, and every one expected him to die.
When the Jeronimite fathers arrived in Hispaniola they failed to do what was expected of them. They did something, it is true; for they took from those officers of the court, who were not living in the Indies, all their Indian slaves and tried to give them to others who would treat them kindly; but they did not set them free, neither did they bring the judges to trial for their evil deeds.
From 1492, the discovery of Hispaniola, to 1502, the short space of but four years, such was the mortality among the natives, that the Spaniards then holding rule there, "began to employ a few" Africans in the mines of the Island. The experiment was effective a successful one. The Indian and African were enslaved together, when the Indian sunk, and the African stood.
Word Of The Day