THE OPEN GATE
and following the bird's flight, they soon reached the friendly shores of Hispaniola.
Hardly was Isabella cold in her grave ere her humane decrees for the protection of the Indians were annulled. "Her death," says a missionary priest, "was the signal for their destruction." The hateful system of repartimientos was at once re-established. Ovando, the Governor, had found it impossible to make the colony pay without forced Indian labour, for the Spaniards would not themselves work the mines or till the soil. A strong, capable man, though hard and cruel, he was not slow to seize the opportunity afforded by Isabella's death. Ferdinand's scruples were easily overcome, and soon every Spanish colonist boasted his share of slaves.
Hernando Cortés, as became a young Spanish hidalgo, set foot in the New World with a lordly contempt for work, and a firm resolve to gain, at the sword's point if need be, the gold for which he lusted. To Ovando's offer of land and slaves he replied with fitting scorn, "I came to get gold, not to till the soil like a peasant!" But gold lay not to everyone's hand. The youth had perforce to pocket his pride and take up the work which he so much despised.
Goaded to despair by starvation and labour far beyond their strength, the Indians strove at intervals to throw off the intolerable yoke, and Cortés varied the monotony of his life by joining in the suppression of these revolts. This struggle between ignorant, timid, naked savages and mail-clad Spanish soldiers with cavalry and cannon, cannot be dignified by
