with the usual difficulties connected with the planting of a colony in a distant and uncultivated country, but with the mutinous disposition of many of his followers, and the indolence of all, greatly increased by the enervating influence of a hot climate, to which they were unaccustomed. Their provisions were rapidly consuming, and what remained were corrupted by the heat and moisture of a tropical climate: the natives cultivated but little ground, and had scarcely sufficient provisions for themselves, consequently could not supply the wants of the Spaniards. The malignant diseases which prevail in the torrid zone, especially where the country is uncultivated, raged among them with great violence. Murmurs and complaints arose against Columbus and those who accompanied him in his former voyage. They were accused of having allured their countrymen to attempt a settlement in a land, which they had represented as a terrestrial paradise, but in reality barbarous and inhospitable, where they must inevitably perish by famine, or by unknown diseases. By his unwearied exertions and prudent measures, Columbus succeeded so far in restoring concord, as to be able to leave the island in pursuit of further discoveries. During a tedious voyage of five months, attended with every hardship and peril, he made no discovery of importance, except the island of Jamaica. He left the command of the infant colony to his brother, Don Diego, with the assistance of a council of officers; but no sooner had he left the harbour, than the soldiers dispersed over the island in small parties, lived upon the natives, wasted their provisions, seized their women, and treated that inoffensive race with all the insolence of military oppression. The natives silently submitted to these oppressions for a considerable time, hoping that their invaders would leave their country; but discovering that they had not come to visit the island, but to settle in it, they perceived that their oppressions would never be terminated but by expelling their cruel invaders. Roused by a common danger, and driven almost to desperation, all the caciques, or chiefs of the island, except Guacanahari, who from the first had been the friend of the Spaniards, united, and brought into the field, according to the Spanish accounts, a force of one hundred thousand men. Their arms were clubs, sticks of wood hardened in the fire, and arrows pointed with bones or flints.

Fortunately for the Spaniards, Columbus returned just at this crisis, and his presence, and the impending danger, restored authority and produced union. But two-thirds of the original number had died, and many of those who survived were incapable of service, so that two hundred foot and twenty horses were all that could take the field. To this force was united one of a novel kind, consisting of twenty large bull-dogs, but perhaps not the least efficient against timid and naked Indians. With great sim

plicity the natives collected in a large plain, instead of attempting to draw the Spaniards into the fastnesses and defiles of the mountains. Alarmed by the noise and havock of firearms, the impetuosity of the cavalry, and the furious assaults of ferocious dogs, the natives were instantly filled with consternation, and threw down their arms and fled. Many were slain, and a much greater number taken prisoners, and reduced to a state of servitude. From this moment they abandoned themselves to despair, and relinquished all thoughts of resisting men whom they regarded as invincible. In a few days the Spaniards marched over the whole island, and subjected it to their government, without further opposition. The natives were treated as a conquered people, and a tribute imposed upon all persons above the age of fourteen years. In the districts where gold was found, each person was obliged to pay quarterly as much gold dust as filled a hawk's bill, and in other parts of the island twenty-five pounds of cotton were demanded. These unjust and rigorous measures Columbus, contrary to his own inclinations and his original plan of government, was constrained to adopt, to satisfy the rapacity of the Spanish court, and counteract the machinations of his enemies, who were constantly intriguing to destroy him. This was the first regular tax imposed on the natives, and was the origin of that system of exaction of tribute, or a capitation tax, from the natives, which Spain ever after maintained with the most intolerable oppression.

The settlement in Hispaniola was the parent, and served as the model of all the other Spanish settlements in America. Columbus, having returned to Spain, a more regular plan for the colony was adopted, and a large body of settlers was sent out, consisting of husbandmen, artisans, and workmen skilled in the various arts of digging and working mines, and refining the precious metals, together with a suitable number of women. All these emigrants were, for a certain number of years, to be supported and paid by the Spanish government. With these prudent and judicious regulations, Columbus proposed one of a most pernicious nature, which was the transportation, to the colony, of certain convicts, who had usually been sent to the galleys. This fatal expedient, inconsiderately proposed, was, with as little consideration, adopted, and the prisons of Spain were drained to recruit the colony. This absurd and cruel measure of emptying their jails into their colonies, was not only continued by Spain, but imitated by Great Britain, and in both continents held no unimportant station in the catalogue of colonial grievances against the mother country.

In the third voyage made by Columbus, he sailed further to the south, and the first land he discovered was the island of Trinidad, on the coast of Guiana, near the mouth of the Oronoco. Columbus having become involved among those adverse currents and

tempestuous waves, produced by the body of water which this river rolls into the ocean, with difficulty escaped through a narrow strait. He, however, very justly concluded, that a river of such vast magnitude could not flow from an island, as it must require a country of great extent to supply so large a body of water, and consequently felt persuaded that he had at length discovered the continent which had so long been the supreme object of his hopes and wishes. He directed his course to the west, along the coast of the province of Cumana; landed at several places, and had some intercourse with the inhabitants, who he found resembled those of Hispaniola, although possessed of a better understanding, and more courage.

When Columbus arrived at Hispaniola he found the colony in an unprosperous and distracted state. After his departure, his brother, in pursuance of his advice, removed the colony from Isabella to a more eligible situation on the opposite side of the island, and laid the foundation of the present town of St. Domingo, which, for a long period, remained the most considerable European settlement in America, and was the seat of the supreme courts in the Spanish dominions. A war with the natives broke out, and whilst Diego Columbus was employed against them in the field, his attention was arrested by a most alarming mutiny among the Spaniards, which threatened the ruin of the colony. Columbus, by a reasonable offer of pardon, and other judicious measures, succeeded in allaying the spirit of sedition, and induced the malecontents to return to their duty. To effect this object, however, he was obliged so far to yield to the demands of the mutineers, as to agree to grant to them allotments of land in different parts of the island, with the right to the servitude of the natives settled on the same, so far as that they were to cultivate a certain portion of ground for the use of their new masters, which was to be in lieu of the tribute that had been imposed on them. This regulation was the germ of the system of Reparlimientos, or distribution and servitude of the natives, which was established throughout the Spanish dominions in America. This plan of domestic servitude was founded on the same principles with the feudal system, so far as that applied to villiens or serfs, who performed the most degrading services, were attached to the soil, and were transferable with it. It reduced a large proportion of the natives in all the Spanish dominions to the most humiliating servitude, and subjected them to grievous and intolerable oppressions. It is one of the sources from whence have flowed the tears of an oppressed people, in such profusion, as if collected into one channel, would almost swell to a flood the vast rivers which flow through their country.

In the year 1500, Alonzo de Ojeda, a gallant officer, who had

accompanied Columbus in his second voyage, sailed on an expedition to America, with four ships, which had been equipped by the merchants of Seville, and was accompanied by Americus Vespu cius, a gentleman of Florence. Having obtained a chart of Columbus' last voyage, Ojeda servilely followed in the same track, and arrived on the coast of Paria. He sailed to the west as far as the Cape de Vela, and traversed the coast a considerable extent beyond where Columbus had touched, and returned by way of Hispaniola to Spain.

Americus, on his return, wrote an account of the voyage and discoveries, and framed his narrative with so much art and address, as to secure to himself the credit and glory of having first discovered the continent in the New World. The novelty of the work, being the first publication concerning the discoveries which had been made in the Western World, and the amusing history which he gave of the voyage and adventures, obtained for it a rapid and extensive circulation, and spread the fame of the author over Europe. This bold attempt to assume the merit and glory which belonged to another, by an unaccountable caprice has been suffered to succeed, and, by the universal consent of nations, the name of America has been bestowed on the New World.

During the fourth voyage made by Columbus he discovered the Island of Guiana, and the coast of the Continent from Cape Gracias a Dios to a harbour, which, from its beauty and security, he called Porto Bello. He went ashore at various places, and penetrated into the country, but searched in vain for the strait that he had long been attempting to discover, which he supposed led into an unknown ocean. He was so charmed with the fertility of the country, and the specimens of gold found on the natives, that he determined to plant a small colony under the command of his brother, in the province of Verague. But the insolence and rapacity of his men provoked the natives, who were a more warlike race than those of the Islands, to take up arms against the Spaniards, part of whom were killed, and the rest obliged to seek safety by abandoning the station.

This was the first repulse the Spaniards had received from the natives, and deprived Columbus of the honour of planting the first colony on the continent of America.

From the first discovery of the continent by Columbus, ten years elapsed before the Spaniards had made a settlement in any part of it; but in the year 1509, two expeditions were fitted out for this purpose, by individual enterprise; one under the command of Ojeda, and the other under Nicuessa; the former consisted of three vessels and three hundred men, and the latter of six vessels and seven hundred men. A grant or patent was given to Ojeda, of the country from Cape de Vela to the Gulf of DaVOL. 1.

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rien; and to Nicuessa, from thence to Cape Gracias a Dios, with the power of planting colonies and establishing a government.

These adventurers were instructed to acquaint the natives with the primary articles of Christianity, and particularly to inform them of the supreme jurisdiction of the Pope, and of the grant which he had made of their country to the king of Spain; and then to require them to embrace Christianity, and to acknowledge the authority of the Spanish sovereign; and in case the natives did not comply with these requirements, they were told it would be lawful to attack them with fire and sword, exterminate them, and reduce their wives and children to servitude, or compel them to acknowledge the authority of the Church and of the Spanish monarch. This very wise and reasonable mode of taking possession of the country, was prescribed by the most eminent lawyers and divines in Spain. Both of these attempts failed, and nearly all engaged in them, with two considerable reinforcements from St. Domingo, perished within one year. The aborigines were fierce and warlike, and manifested the most implacable enmity toward them; they used arrows dipped in poison, so noxious that almost every wound was followed by death. Seventy of the Spaniards were killed in one engagement. What few survived settled at Santa Maria, on the Gulf of Darien, under Vasco Balboa, whose extraordinary courage in the most trying emergencies, secured to him the confidence of his countrymen, and the rank of their leader. This was not the only bold adventurer afterward distinguished for daring exploits and splendid undertakings, that was engaged in this unfortunate enterprise. The celebrated Francisco Pizarro was one of Ojeda's party, and in this school of adversity and hardships qualified himself for the wonderful achievements which he subsequently performed. Fernando Cortes was at first engaged in this enterprise; but being taken sick at St. Domingo before the expedition sailed, he was left behind, and his life spared for more daring and successful undertakings.

Balboa made frequent incursions into the country, and subdued several of the caciques; and being informed by the natives that at the distance of many suns to the south there was another ocean, where gold was so common that the inhabitants made their common utensils of that metal, he concluded that this ocean was the one for which Columbus had so long searched in vain, and that it afforded a direct communication to the East Indies. With one hundred and ninety men, a part of which he had obtained from Hispaniola, he undertook the bold expedition of crossing over the Isthmus which connects North and South America, without any knowledge of the extent or nature of the country, or any guides but natives, on whose fidelity he could not safely rely.

Balboa set out on this expedition on the first of September,