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This was contrary to the original plan of the admiral, who had intended to steer to Jamaica, and thence to take a departure for the continent, and explore its coasts in search of the supposed strait. It was contrary to the orders of the sovereigns also, prohibiting him on his outward voyage to touch at Hispaniola.
Would not the first of them who saw me wring my neck like a snipe's? Would not my absence itself be an evidence to them of my alarm, and therefore of my fatal knowledge? It was all over, I thought. Good-by to the Hispaniola, good-by to the squire, the doctor, and the captain. There was nothing left for me but death by starvation, or death by the hands of the mutineers.
The planks, which had not been swabbed since the mutiny, bore the print of many feet; and an empty bottle, broken by the neck, tumbled to and fro like a live thing in the scuppers. Suddenly the Hispaniola came right into the wind.
Helps to treat at length and with exhaustive thoroughness, is the early relations between the conquerors and the conquered, embracing the method of settlement of the different countries, the whole disastrous system of ripartimientos and encomiendas, which, in its full development, led to the destruction of the native population of Hispaniola, and to the introduction of negroes into this and the other West India islands to supply the demand for laborers.
Wherefore, as soon as the weather became a little fair, he sailed away to the westwards, and on Tuesday the 19th of August, he lost sight of that island, standing directly for Hispaniola and named the most easterly cape of Jamaica on the south coast Cabo del Farol.
Unluckily, this wicked speculation proved profitable, and other Portuguese were induced to embark in it. In 1492, the West India islands were discovered by Columbus. The Spaniards, dazzled with the acquisition of a new world and eager to come into possession of their wealth, compelled the natives of Hispaniola to dig in the mines.
The buccaneers or West Indian corsairs owed their origin as well as their name to the cattle and hog-hunters of Hispaniola and Tortuga.
They meant to seize the remaining canoes, and with them make their way to Hispaniola. But, at the very point of the outbreak of the new mutiny, a sail was seen standing toward the harbor. The Spaniards could see that the vessel was small. She kept the offing, but sent a boat on shore.
It seems to be generally agreed, however, among the Jesuit historians of the West Indies and upon these writers we are almost entirely dependent for our knowledge of the origins of buccaneering that the corsairs had their source and nucleus in the hunters who infested the coasts of Hispaniola. Between the hunter and the pirate at first no impassable line was drawn.
Perhaps they think that these last watch over their bread-making. It was thus that the ancients believed that the dryads, hamadryads, satyrs, pans, nereids, watched over the fountains, forests, and seas, attributing to each force in nature a presiding divinity. The islanders of Hispaniola even believe that the zemes respond to their wishes when they invoke them.
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