heard a great deal about the mines of Cibao, and they decided to go in search of them and secure their treasures for themselves.  They went inland into a territory which was under the rule of King Caonabo, a very fierce Carib who was not a native of Espanola, but had come there as an adventurer and remained as a conqueror.  Although he resented the intrusion of the Spaniards into the island he would not have dared to come and attack them there if they had obeyed the Admiral’s orders and remained in the territory of Guacanagari; but when they came into his own country he had them in a trap, and it was easy for him to fall upon those foolish swaggering Spaniards and put them to death.  He then decided to go and take the fort.

He formed an alliance with the neighbouring king, Mayreni, whose province was in the west of the island.  Getting together a force of warriors these two kings marched rapidly and stealthily through the, forest for several days until they arrived at its northern border.  They came in the dead of night to the neighbourhood of La Navidad, where the inhabitants of the fortress, some ten in number, were fast asleep.  Fast asleep were the remaining dozen or so of the Spaniards who were living in houses or huts in the neighbourhood; fast asleep also the gentle natives, not dreaming of troubles from any quarter but that close at hand.  The sweet silence of the tropical night was suddenly broken by frightful yells as Caonabo and his warriors rushed the fortress and butchered the inhabitants, setting fire to it and to the houses round about.  As their flimsy huts burst into flames the surprised Spaniards rushed out, only to be fallen upon by the infuriated blacks.  Eight of the Spaniards rushed naked into the sea and were drowned; the rest were butchered.  Guacanagari manfully came to their assistance and with his own followers fought throughout the night; but his were a gentle and unwarlike people, and they were easily routed.  The King himself was badly wounded in the thigh, but Caonabo’s principal object seems to have been the destruction of the Spaniards, and when that was completed he and his warriors, laden with the spoils, retired.

Thus Columbus, walking on the shore with his native interpreter, or sitting in his cabin listening with knitted brow to the accounts of the islanders, learns of the complete and utter failure of his first hopes.  It has come to this.  These are the real first-fruits of his glorious conquest and discovery.  The New World has served but as a virgin field for the Old Adam.  He who had sought to bring light and life to these happy islanders had brought darkness and death; they had innocently clasped the sword he had extended to them and cut themselves.  The Christian occupation of the New World had opened with vice, cruelty, and destruction; the veil of innocence had been rent in twain, and could never be mended or joined again.  And the Earthly Paradise in which life had gone so happily, of which sun and shower