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A month or two later, when Columbus was better, he and Bartholomew together mustered the whole of their available army and marched out in search of the native force, which he knew had been rallied and greatly augmented. The two forces met near the present town of Santiago, in the plain known as the Savanna of Matanza.
Sometimes, too, a detachment traversing the savanna would notice with affright a column of thin smoke stealing up into the sky a mile to windward; and almost before the bugle or the drum could summon them to arms, the flames would be seething and crackling around them, and roaring away, in an ocean of fire, across the savanna beyond.
My mule halted at the rancho; I threw the bridle over her neck, and went forward on foot; but I had not proceeded a hundred paces before my attention was arrested by the cheerful murmur of another little stream, also descending from the foot of the mountain at our right, but this time, after traversing half the width of the savanna, it turned away suddenly to the north, and with a merry dash and sparkling leap started off on its journey to the Atlantic!
Here you drag the canoe up into the forest, and leave it there. Your baggage must now be carried by the Indians. The creek you passed in the river intersects the path to the next settlement; a large mora has fallen across it and makes an excellent bridge. After walking an hour and a half you come to the edge of the forest, and a savanna unfolds itself to the view.
We encamped on a spot of much the same character as we had chosen on the previous night. A short distance behind rose a rich hummock, where live-oak, mahogany, mulberry, gum, cabbage-palm, and other valuable trees and shrubs, grew together in the greatest luxuriance. Beyond it stretched a savanna, where our pilot told us we should find abundance of small birds.
Those Indians, according to a treaty formerly made with Governor Nicolson, laid claim to the lands lying south-west of Savanna river, and, to procure their friendship for this infant colony, was an object of the highest consequence. But as the tribe of Indians settled at Yamacraw was inconsiderable, Oglethorpe judged it necessary to have the other tribes also to join with them in the treaty.
He saw a herd grazing on the same little savanna by the lake, but when he had stalked it with great care he found that it was not the one he wanted. A search deeper into the hills revealed another herd, but still the wrong one. A second day's search disclosed the right group grazing in a snug little valley, and there was the big bull who had hurt so sorely his body and his pride.
The Yamassees possessed a large territory lying backwards from Port-royal Island, on the north-east side of Savanna river, which to this day is called Indian Land. By the Carolineans this tribe had long been esteemed as friends and allies, who had admitted a number of traders into their towns, and several times assisted the settlers in their war-like enterprizes.
Formerly the inhabitants in and about Savanna had transmitted to the Trustees a representation of their grievous circumstances, and obtained from them some partial relief. But now, chagrined with disappointments, and dispirited by the severities of the climate, they could view the design of the Trustees in no other light than that of having decoyed them into misery.
If we are able to obtain an elevated view of the savanna, let us say, in the Llanos which constitute the Province of Barinas, and through which the Apure rolls its rapid current to swell the volume of the Orinoco, we shall observe, at distant intervals upon the plain, irregular groups of palm-trees surmounting the wavy level of the grass.
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