THE ROMANCE OF MEXICO
the Spaniards, and loud were their curses when they found it not.
In one of the islands, which he named Hispaniola, now St. Domingo, Columbus founded a colony, but with such turbulent, discontented settlers it was indeed a hard and thankless task. In vain did he seek to protect the unhappy natives from the insolence and cruel exactions of his followers. The soil must be tilled, and hard manual work was little to the taste of the lordly conquerors, so the Indians were perforce pressed into service and virtually enslaved.
Columbus on his third voyage discovered the mainland of the continent, but the glory of this achievement was stolen from the great Admiral by a wily Florentine who followed in his track. This man, Amerigo by name, wrote on his return so artful and vainglorious an account of his voyage that he reaped all the honour of the discovery of the continent, and in time the New World actually came to be called by his name.
To his colony of Hispaniola, seething with mutiny and misery, Columbus strove meanwhile to restore order; but all in vain, for the proud Spanish hidalgos scorned the upstart foreigner and bitterly resented his efforts to protect the Indians. It was only at great cost that he succeeded at last in restoring the semblance of peace and order. A tract of land with an allotted number of natives was granted to each rebel. Thus originated the terrible system of repartimientos, or distributions of Indian slaves to the settlers, which made Spanish colonisation so deadly a curse.
