A THIRD VOYAGE. 295 



several authorities, to many hundred thousands, were sacrificed by war, famine, and 

 disease. These figures are undoubtedly exaggerations, but the number was very large. It 

 is due to Columbus, always a just and humane man, to state that he did all in his powei 

 to prevent this sad state of affairs, and was forced by his own people to war on the 

 Indians ; and equally due to Isabella at home, to record that she was in no way a party 

 to it, but expressed the utmost horror.* These excesses, and a total neglect of agriculture 

 for none would condescend to dig unless for gold nearly brought about a famine, and 

 Columbus had to put them on very short rations, and compel all to work, whether high 

 or low bred. These regulations led to further mutiny and discontent. 



On the return of Columbus to Spain, he brought home, as before, some gold and 

 ether samples of Nature's productions in the islands. But other voyagers returned, who 

 loudly abused the new colony, and whose often wan and sallow features provoked the 

 satirical remarks of the people, that they had come back with more gold in their features 

 than in their pockets ! In short, the novelty of the excitement had passed, and like many 

 really valuable colonies of our own day which have been at first over-lauded and over- 

 estimated, Hispaniola fell utterly in public estimation. The Spanish sovereigns, more 

 especially Isabella, appear to have lent an unwilling ear to the accusations of mal-adminis- 

 tration by Columbus. Meantime the treasury was drained by the expenses of an Italian 

 war, and large expenses had been incurred for the actual maintenance of the colony. But 

 Isabella, who really believed in Columbus, whose serious and yet enthusiastic character 

 resembled her own, at length found some means for a new expedition, by sacrificing funds 

 intended for another purpose. But now it was found as difficult to induce men to join 

 the new expedition as it had been easy in the previous one. Even convicts were employed 

 as sailors, and this proved a ruinous expedient. All being at length ready, Columbus once 

 again embarked on May 30th, 1498, his little squadron consisting of six vessels. On this 

 voyage he discovered Trinidad, the mouth of the Orinoco which river he imagined to 

 proceed from the tree of life in the midst of Paradise and the coasts of Paria, South 

 America. This was really, then his first visit to the mainland of America. On August 

 14th he sailed for Hispaniola once more, where he found that an insurrection had been raised 

 against his brother, Bartolomeo, whom he had left as his deputy. At this juncture all 

 the real interests of the colony were neglected, and even the gold-mines, which were 

 beginning to prove remunerative, were unwrought. The convicts on the vessels helped to 

 swell the mass of general mutiny, and it took Columbus nearly a year before it was in 

 part quelled. Meantime discontented and worthless men kept returning to Spain, where, 

 encouraged by idle courtiers, they worried the king daily with accounts of the unpro- 

 ductiveness of the colony. They even surrounded him, as he rode out on horseback, 

 clamouring loudly for the arrears of which they said Columbus had defrauded them. 



It is very difficult to exactly understand the course pursued at this juncture by the 



* It must be remembered that it was the received opinion of the good Roman Catholics of the period, that 

 heathen nations were outside the pale of spiritual and civil rights, and that their bodies were the property 

 of their conquerors. Even Columbus recommended an exchange of native slaves for the commodities required 

 in the colony ; representing, moreover, that their conversion would be the more surely effected in slavery 1 

 Vide Prescott's "History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella." 



