About this time messengers came from Bohechio and Anacaona, informing the Adelantado that the tribute of that country was ready for him, and he accordingly went to fetch it. During his absence from the seat of government, and under the less vigorous administration of Don Diego Columbus, who had been left at the head of affairs at Isabella, those discontents among the Spaniards, which had no doubt been rife for a long time, broke out in a distinct manner. I allude to the well-known insurrection of Roldan, whom the admiral, on his departure, had left as chief justice in the island. The disputes between the chief justice and the governor were to form the first of a series of similar proceedings to take place afterwards in many colonies even down to our own times. It may be imagined that the family of Columbus were a hard race to deal with; and any one observing that the admiral was very often engaged in disputes, and almost always in the right, might conjecture that he was one of those persons who pass through life proving that all people about them are wrong, and going a great way to make them so. This would have been an easy mode of explaining many things, and therefore very welcome to a narrator, but it would not be at all just towards Columbus to saddle upon him any such character. Here were men who had come out with very grand. expectations, and who found themselves pinched with hunger, having dire storms to encounter, and vast labours to undergo; who were restrained within due bounds by no pressure of society; who were commanded by a foreigner, or by members of his family, whom they knew to have many enemies at court; who thought that the Sovereigns themselves could scarcely reach them at this distance; and who imagined that they had worked themselves out of an law and order, and that they deserved an Alsatian immunity. With such men (many of them, perhaps, “not worthy of water,”) the admiral and his brothers had to get useful works of all kinds done; and did contrive to get vessels navigated, forts built, and some ideas of civilization maintained. But it was an arduous task at all times: and this Roldan did not furnish the least of the troubles which the admiral and his brothers had to endure.
Insurrection of Roldan.
Roldan, too, if we could hear him, would probably have something to say. He wished, it appears, to return to Spain, as Father Buil and Margarite had done; and urged that a certain caravel which the Governor Don Bartholomew Columbus had built, might be launched for that purpose. Such is the account of Ferdinand Columbus, who maintains that the said caravel could not be lunched for want of tackle. He also mentions that Roldan complained of the restless life the Adelantado led his men, building forts and towns; and said that there was no hope of the admiral coming back to the colony with supplies. Without going into these squabbles—and indeed it is very difficult when a quarrel of this kind arises, taking it up at